Efficacy of two commercial preparations of interferon-α on human papillomavirus replication

Previous studies on the effectiveness of interferon (IFN) therapy in the treatment of cervical carcinoma have produced highly inconsistent results and the conclusion regarding the efficacy of IFNs has been quite controversial. As the organotypic raft culture system mimics the differentiation-dependent life cycle of human papillomavirus (HPV), the causative agent of cervical cancer, we utilized the raft culture system to study the effects of interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) on the vegetative replication of HPV. The effect of different concentrations of Interferon-alpha-n3 (Alferon N) and Interferon-alpha-2b (Intron A) on HPV16, HPV18 and HPV31b vegetative replication was studied in cell lines harboring episomal copies of these high risk HPV types. Our studies indicate that Alferon N and Intron A varied in a concentration-dependent manner in their ability to affect the viral load of different HPV types. Treatment with an increasing concentration of IFN-alpha preparations did not always correlate with a stepwise inhibition of HPV replication.